A post to sort things out in my head (and maybe yours too)...

The OP mixes up two topics, related and both interesting but perhaps better treated separately. It begins and ends with the disenchantment and possible re-enchantment of power, but in the middle there's a very speculative digression into the "polytheism" of small enchantments.

But what's done is done, and I don't mind discussing either.

A note on understanding.

(For your own comfort and safety, please breathe between paragraphs.)

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. — Aristotle

To reach an understanding is to find a mutual accommodation. Therefore, to understand something or someone, one requires some vacancy of mind together with the ability to reach out with empathy to the thing or person.

For example:– you read this post, and to understand it, you have to entertain the ideas it presents, and consider the significance for your other significant understandings of believing them. If your mind is too full of other stuff you won't have room to entertain a new thought

We all love to be entertained, and to entertain. Entertainment distracts the mind from its own conflicts and confusions.

And some of us have reached an understanding with a significant other. This is the enchantment of romantic love - a mutual accommodation.

The enchantment to beware is the one sided accommodation where the ideas of others find a home in you, but you find no home in them. Heroes and idols, one sided love affairs manipulations. Beware especially the one-sided media that disguise themselves as poly-vocal; the chat show, the discussion, and do not mistake a claim to be unbiased as any kind of accommodation.

And some of us have reached an understanding with a significant other. This is the enchantment of romantic love - a mutual accommodation. — unenlightened

I tend to experience romantic love more like being hit on the head with a mallet, causing brain damage, madness, and aberrant behaviour. I think I experience understanding like that too sometimes. Or, to use a different metaphor, it's like immersion, and the accommodation may never come.

Are you saying that we cannot be unenchanted, but that we can be enchanted well, genuine understanding and romantic love being the models we should look to?

EDIT: I hadn't seen your last paragraph when I wrote this.

Power of course is neither good nor bad it’s how it’s used. It can be used to suppress our liberties as tyrants do, but in that hands of a good and just leader it empowers to live our lives to the fullest.

Humans are cunning animals with plenty of ambition to go with it so despite all their scheming and fanciful ideals it comes down to a sentiment expressed by the great Bob Dylan



@Jamal

Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don't stand in the doorway
Don't block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
The battle outside ragin'
Will soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin'

I tend to experience romantic love more like being hit on the head with a mallet, causing brain damage, madness, and aberrant behaviour — Jamal

Your experience is only half the romance: it takes two to tango. Alas my instruction to breathe came too late. The whole point is the mutuality of relationships of understanding.

What you describe is what magicians call 'possession' and psychiatrists call 'obsession'. Not entertaining or accommodating an idea in your mind, but the idea taking over your mind. Trump is such a magician. Magicians recite their spells without for a moment entertaining them, so they work on others and not themselves. @Banno calls it "bullshit" which is a defensive warding counter-spell, whose effect is very limited because it lacks poetic power.

Are you saying that we cannot be unenchanted, but that we can be enchanted well, genuine understanding and romantic love being the models we should look to? — Jamal

I'm saying that magic is part of everyday life, and we are well advised to recognise how it works. I am saying that it works best on those who deny it.

How do I know that someone is enchanted? How does one learn the linguistic expression of enchantment? What does it connect up with? With the expression of bodily sensations? Do we ask someone what he feels in his breast and facial muscles in order to find out whether he is feeling enjoyment? But does that mean that there aren't any sensations after all which often return when one is enjoying music? Certainly not. (In some places he is near weeping, and he feels it in his throat.) A poem makes an impression on us as we read it. — Ludwig Wittgenstein, Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology 2

―

Alas my instruction to breathe came too late. The whole point is the mutuality of relationships of understanding. — unenlightened

Isn't it also important not to be too quick to conclude that the other has failed to understand?

Otherwise, sage words indeed, as befit your role.

To be open to understanding is to be open to misunderstanding; apologies for reading too much between the lines. One more word before I wake up to the real world:

To be possessed of reason is a great gift, but to be possessed by reason is to suffer a life-long tyranny.

:cool:

desacralization of power. — Jamal

Add decentralisation to that as well.

The proximity to the powers that be seems to be important to me: the corporation, while faceless, takes the position of the provider to a certain degree, yet has no issue with dictating the terms of one's toils without any pretense of having one's best interests, or the best interests of anybody, in mind, as profits are all that matter.

Furthermore, there is a sense of purpose and identity that goes with living under an authoritarian strong-man who speaks to all of the xenophobic or otherwise dark tendencies some people desire to see realized. At least Trump had the interests of the reactionary right and alt-right in mind. I doubt a single cart-gatherer for a super-market truly believes that the supermarket they work for cares that they harbor racist thoughts - or would validate them. Probably because they don't and wouldn't, as a corporation is not a political tribe.

edit: not supporting Trump here, he was perhaps the most criminal president we have ever had

Again, while I don't disagree with your characterizations, I do think they might be compatible with my position. Having said that, I'm not really wedded to my suggestion, that these are all magic spells equivalent to Enchantment with a capital E. — Jamal

I don't think it's incompatible, either; I never meant my comments as a direct contradiction. I only question some of the categories.
But, no, I don't think either ostentation or consumerism has much relation to magic.
The emperors of China, the sun king, the pharaohs, not to mention Mansa Musa of the Mali empire, all displayed their great wealth, and it only added to their aura of sanctity. They all lived and ruled over nations with a strong sense of identity and belief that a god (or several) favoured them above other nations, and their rulers above other men.

I think most people today undervalue the pull of magic, of awe, of myth, wonderment and yearning.
There is a commercial degradation of both language and spirit when "myth" is used as a synonym for "lie" and pizza can be routinely "awesome". Again, I don't know about Europe today, but modern American jingo is not interchangeable with Nathan Hale's ideal of patriotism. Nor can televangelism be compared to the monastic zeal of the middle ages. All surface, no conviction. And no amount of baconcheeseburgers will substitute for manna.

When you stop believing that Santa Claus and his elves - or Baby Jesus and his angels - make Christmas, it doesn't matter how much tinsel you hang or money you spend of gifts - the magic is gone forever.

When you stop believing that Santa Claus and his elves - or Baby Jesus and his angels - make Christmas, it doesn't matter how much tinsel you hang or money you spend of gifts - the magic is gone forever. — Vera Mont

And what is left? Imagine a world where everyone helped everyone else continually with no entertainment. Imagine a world where everyone just entertained themselves without helping anyone else. It’s meaningless in every direction. Those people will just say have a “mixed economy” of helping and entertainment. Somehow, this mundane realization is seen as the modern standard, and this is tedious as the tedium of technology. The myths were there so that there was a veneer of something greater than entertainment and surviving.

Though it should be revealed as such, it’s banishment leads to Sisyphus and the mundanity of contingency. Next stop (hopefully) Cioran Pessimism.

The myths were there so that there was a veneer of something greater than entertainment and surviving. — schopenhauer1

But we still can have Science - not the science of mere technology to which commercialism has reduced it, but Science as a quest for knowledge and mastery, just as wizardry was a quest for knowledge and control.
We still can have Philosophy - not polemics, not nit-picking pedantry, but the striving to understand our relationship to the world.
We still have ideals... some of us, who have not lost them in the tide of ideologies.

I'd add something like a mode of behaviour to "a way of thinking". It's real, as real as religion, although like religion, it might not always work, or work in the way people think.

I admit I’ve used the concept loosely. — Jamal

Yes, but "magic" is a loosey goosey term, once it's taken out o the theater and pressed into service at the Academy. A lot of what we say about religion is also loosey goosey—not because we are sloppy thinkers. (I mean, we might be sloppy thinkers, but there is an awful lot of slop in the topic to start with,).

As somebody said, "Religion is magic you believe in; magic is religion you don't believe in."

I would now reveal all to you, but it's time for my Tuesday lunch date; if I remember, I'll disabuse you of your enchantment later.

I think there's probably a lot of chanting going on, like "I'm a terrible son." "Why are they calling me? I prefer text messages because I have so much more time to prepare to act like a regular human being on text messages." "I work hard to protect my ability to be abnormal, so you guys can screw yourselves!"

Personal chanting is supposedly the magic by which we create the world. So why does it seem that the world is totally fucked up? Because that's what we wanted. Utopia is boring.

**God, that's such smug bullshit. I bet all the people who like smug bullshit will appreciate it. God, they're so smug.**

I'll disabuse you of your enchantment later. — BC

Oh, please do not abuse us with disenchantment!

I mean, we might be sloppy thinkers, but there is an awful lot of slop in the topic to start with, — BC

But this, I like very much. We do always include a lot of slop in big topics; it's hard, slow work, picking out and washing the nuggets.

Yes, but "magic" is a loosey goosey term, once it's taken out o the theater and pressed into service at the Academy — BC

The term is used in anthropology, ethnology, sociology, psychology, and philosophy. No doubt it’s used loosely sometimes in those disciplines. I guess you’ve been unlucky and have somehow, in all of your reading, managed to miss the more rigorous use of the term.

I think it’s fascinating why people wish to be deceived by macigians.

The mystery of how it’s done always appeals and makes us think, stretching our imaginations to ponder.

Once you know though that mystery disappears, and that makes me sad :(

Great thread. Good read.

The divine right of kings was at least more consistent than the divine right of politicians. Given its premise and the prevailing beliefs, there was perhaps good reason for the passive obedience to a king’s will, whereas for the politicians and leaders of today there is none. In the absence of the divine right of kings some philosophers supplied the legitimacy of power with newer, but just as baseless myths, like the Social Contract or the right of some majority to determine who has authority over whom. In a sense people continue to hold in fact doctrines they have rejected in name.

So it is with Nietzsche’s socialist. He is unable to legitimize the business owner’s authority as he once did the leaders of a superior kind, those militant types who hitherto governed them with force and subjection. The act of submitting voluntarily to someone who is neither superior in class or race was too foreign to him, I suppose, so the socialist runs, serf-like, to the politicians and the State.

I would say the magical forces do not manifest as economics and economy, but as politics and the State. The relationship between employee and employer rises from the Law of Necessity (in Nietzschean terms) whereas the relationship between man and state is one of unbridled superstition.

But we still can have Science - not the science of mere technology to which commercialism has reduced it, but Science as a quest for knowledge and mastery, just as wizardry was a quest for knowledge and control.
We still can have Philosophy - not polemics, not nit-picking pedantry, but the striving to understand our relationship to the world.
We still have ideals... some of us, who have not lost them in the tide of ideologies. — Vera Mont

But my point was "Science" is the tedium. Otherwise it is just more achoring myths. I'd put it really as entertainment more than myth. But we love our myths, because minutia mongering is oh so tedious. Bits, bytes, chemical reactions, equations, and the like. Sounds good until it's just bip bop boop bop bip boop bop all day all day all day.....

Great thread. Good read — NOS4A2

Thank you.

So it is with Nietzsche’s socialist. He is unable to legitimize the business owner’s authority as he once did the leaders of a superior kind, those militant types who hitherto governed them with force and subjection. The act of submitting voluntarily to someone who is neither superior in class or race was too foreign to him, I suppose, so the socialist runs, serf-like, to the politicians and the State.

I would say the magical forces do not manifest as economics and economy, but as politics and the State. The relationship between employee and employer rises from the Law of Necessity (in Nietzschean terms) whereas the relationship between man and state is one of unbridled superstition. — NOS4A2

I think you have a view of what socialism means that is very different from mine. The socialists I had in mind, and the ones Nietzsche was referring to, were not “running to the State and politicians”, but fighting for rights, grouping together with no help from the State (on the contrary) to challenge the power not only of the employers but of the State that backed them, demanding changes to the law, calling for a revolution and for emancipation. The idea you have that socialism is some kind of worship of the State or necessarily a privileging of government, or that socialist workers have not acted independently of authority, is badly mistaken, and it maligns a long tradition of efforts that, while they did not lead to revolution in Western Europe as intended, did win for the workers many important rights and improvements to their conditions. And you brush it off with contempt!

And this is a clue to what I see is the problem with your second paragraph quoted here. Capitalism subsumes politics and the State. To be under the spell of the State and politicians is to be under that of capitalism, in most countries, where no political party is willing to challenge capitalism.

Of course there have been state socialisms, including some very horrible ones, and of course professional social democrats look to the state to do everything—that’s just not really what we’re talking about when we talk about workers being massacred by police for going on strike.

By the way, although I won’t tell you not to respond to me with a brilliant and comprehensive denunciation of socialism in all its forms, I don’t know if I want to debate that, as it’s not really where I was going with this discussion.

On the other hand, it’s actually interesting to see that the OP is meaningful to someone with a very different world-view, and once again I appreciate that you addressed the central issue.

The spells we are under determine which spells we think people are under, but we’re not always right.

I feel like magical thinking is common, but I'm uncertain how to spot a spell, an enchantment, or an ideology abstractly. There's a sense in which pointing out a spell begins to release its power over someone, unless they like the spell: and then is it a spell, or is it who they are? How many layers of habit can a spell penetrate? Is identity a spell of sorts?

But there's always someone smarter than me (and, there's always someone smarter than anyone, is all I really mean) -- so there's always a possibility that even though I can spot a spell, that I'm enchanted. And if I'm enchanted, was it the enchantment that allowed me to spot the spell? Are there spells which counter-spells?

Magic is something maybe only seen from the outside. In which case, it's hard to identify if it's magic, because you sort of have to know how it works "from the inside" too. In which case it's no longer magical, so how do you spot the spell if it's lost its potency?

So while I find it all very interesting, I also get lost very quickly.

As you know, Nietzsche is no fan of socialism. I only consider what Nietzsche previously wrote of socialists and assume it in this aphorism. He mentions “socialists and state-idolaters” in the same book, but it goes further back, for instance, in Human All Too Human. Their desire for state power is unavoidable.

Maybe I’m wrong but my reading is that Nietzsche was psychoanalyzing the socialist, criticizing how he dehumanizes the employer. The employer is unknown and uninteresting. At the same time he is a cunning, blood-sucking dog of a man, while everything else about him—his name, shape, manner, reputation—no socialist cares about. In my mind this is dehumanization.

But, in an extra little slight upon the socialist, following a tyrant into tyranny isn’t as painful, and if “the nobility of birth showed in [the employer’s] eyes and gestures, there might not be any socialism of the masses.” Perhaps this is why, historically, socialists have followed tyrants and demagogues.

As for capitalism, there is no system that does not consider the management and segregation of capital. In that sense, all economic systems are invariably capitalist, socialist or otherwise, the only difference in being who controls it, private or the State. Had socialists named it something else, like the Monopolist system, we might well have been passed it by now.

I'm not sure how this fits into your thread, but if I have strayed too far, I apologize.

The term is used in anthropology, ethnology, sociology, psychology, and philosophy. No doubt it’s used loosely sometimes in those disciplines. I guess you’ve been unlucky and have somehow, in all of your reading, managed to miss the more rigorous use of the term. — Jamal

Quite possibly. I haven't read much in anthropology, and have not found a lot of magic in sociology, psychology, and philosophy--literally and figuratively.

BTW, one example of "magic" might be the placebo effect. The fake pill can not have a beneficial effect, yet the patient improves. Conversely, the "nocebo" effect also works, where delivering a very bad prognosis seems to speed up the progress of the disease. Low expectations tend to produce low performance. This "magic" is possible because the knowing brain (that thought it was taking a real pill) is also in charge of the details of the body's operation. Ditto for the "nocebo".

Look. I understand that magic is "really real" for many people. A lot of people believe in witch doctors and their magic, for instance. Atheists may think that nothing fails like prayer, but a lot of believers would vehemently disagree. At the beginning of the AIDS epidemic, some gay men resorted to magical cures (crystals, for instance) because there was, literally, nothing else. Part of the "magic" was the real camaraderie of the afflicted, but one doesn't need magic to understand that. When effective medication came along, the crystals were dumped. Many cultures have employed magic to control nature. While granting that magical acts may be truly comforting, when it comes to control of nature, magic has no efficacy. Dancing does not make it rain, but it is a meaningful activity.

But my point was "Science" is the tedium. Otherwise it is just more achoring myths. I'd put it really as entertainment more than myth. But we love our myths, because minutia mongering is oh so tedious. Bits, bytes, chemical reactions, equations, and the like. Sounds good until it's just bip bop boop bop bip boop bop all day all day all day..... — schopenhauer1

No, that's exactly the science I didn't mean. I mean learning the secrets of stars and clouds and oceans; learning the language of whales and cicadas; rediscovering the magic of knowledge that civilization had shut down for so long. One of the recurring myths of pre-agricultural peoples is the ability to communicate with and change places with animals, an ability we lost through some transgression against Nature. The Eden story is a reiteration of that theme. We are only just beginning to shed the constraints of the conqueror's application of natural curiosity.

"Everything begins in mysticism and ends in politics." The most famous quote of a Frenchman who who died in the first Battle of the Marne.

I mean learning the secrets of stars and clouds and oceans; learning the language of whales and cicadas; rediscovering the magic of knowledge that civilization had shut down for so long. — Vera Mont

Learning the secrets of stars, whales and cicadas involves a tremendous amount of tedious work -- work considered tedious by the people who love doing it. The exciting moments are thinly scattered.

Now wait a minute... one of the benefits of civilization has been the rich discoveries of science, boring details and brilliant discoveries alike. What "magic of knowledge" did civilization shut down for so long???

As you know, Nietzsche is no fan of socialism. I only consider what Nietzsche previously wrote of socialists and assume it in this aphorism. He mentions “socialists and state-idolaters” in the same book, but it goes further back, for instance, in Human All Too Human. Their desire for state power is unavoidable.

Maybe I’m wrong but my reading is that Nietzsche was psychoanalyzing the socialist, criticizing how he dehumanizes the employer. The employer is unknown and uninteresting. At the same time he is a cunning, blood-sucking dog of a man, while everything else about him—his name, shape, manner, reputation—no socialist cares about. In my mind this is dehumanization.

But, in an extra little slight upon the socialist, following a tyrant into tyranny isn’t as painful, and if “the nobility of birth showed in [the employer’s] eyes and gestures, there might not be any socialism of the masses.” Perhaps this is why, historically, socialists have followed tyrants and demagogues. — NOS4A2

Although I’ve been reading the book recently, I didn’t notice the bit about state-idolaters. On top of that, I misinterpreted you, forgetting that you were writing about “Nietzsche’s socialist”. I was too quick to jump to the defence of my socialist, the revolutionary workers I had in mind, against what I thought was your own characterization. Apologies.

But I don’t think Nietzsche is writing about the dehumanization of the employer. He is writing about how ordinary the employers appear to workers when compared with great tyrants and generals. He has as much contempt for the bourgeoisie as he does for socialists.

The employer is “unknown and uninteresting”, lacking in greatness, from Nietzsche’s own point of view. From the same section, entitled “Of the Absence of Noble Demeanour”:

It is probable that in all those forms and insignia of a superior race which alone make a person interesting, industrialists and commercial magnates have thus far been woefully deficient; had they the distinction of noble birth in their look and bearing, there might not be any interest in socialism among the masses.

He dislikes both. His sympathies are clearly with, as you’d expect, nobility and greatness.

As for capitalism, there is no system that does not consider the management and segregation of capital. In that sense, all economic systems are invariably capitalist, socialist or otherwise, the only difference in being who controls it, private or the State. Had socialists named it something else, like the Monopolist system, we might well have been passed it by now. — NOS4A2

This is difficult to address because it hinges on the definition of capitalism, which we don’t want to get into. If I just say that any stable State is not in opposition to the economy, and if economic actors are powerful such that they significantly influence the State, then to be under the spell of the State is to be under that of the economy.

I'm not sure how this fits into your thread, but if I have strayed too far, I apologize — NOS4A2

I’m not sure but don’t worry, it’s interesting. I derailed things with my misinterpretation.

Perhaps this is why, historically, socialists have followed tyrants and demagogues — NOS4A2

Forgot to address this. It’s not about who the socialist wants to follow, it’s about who the masses want to follow, and this is what I came back to towards the end of my original post. (Not that I’m endorsing Nietzsche’s view on this entirely, though he does identify something real)